next up previous contents index
Next: Structure of tutorial Up: Introduction Previous: Intended audience   Contents   Index

Related work

Most of the existing textbooks on logic programming carefully describe all language features, but do not provide information how to use these features to obtain particular objectives or how to develop complete systems that can be maintained and extended easily. The methodology developed in the CHIC-II project looks at a much wider methodology question (http://www.icparc.ic.ac.uk/chic2/methodology/). It not only covers problems like how to select a problem solving technology to fit a particular problem, but also discusses project related issues like team composition, rapid prototyping and development of problem specifications. On the other hand, it does not discuss the details of developing an ECLiPSe application once the main design choices have been taken.

The book ``The Craft of Prolog'' by Richard O'Keefe is an invaluable source for writing efficient Prolog programs. Many of the techniques and tricks presented are also applicable to writing efficient ECLiPSe programs. The underlying maxim ``elegance is not optional'' summarizes the spirit of declarative programming. As the book is based on a standard Edinburgh style Prolog, it does not handle issues of module structure and in-line documentation, nor other ECLiPSe specific features.

The ECLiPSe documentation contains most of the information provided in this tutorial, but presents it in a very different way. Invariably, it describes all features of the system, many of which are only required for quite specific (if important) tasks like developing new constraint engines inside the system. It can be difficult to find which parts of the documentation contains important hints to solve a particular problem. On the other hand, it will be useful to look up each feature in the user manual and/or the reference manual as they occur in the tutorial.

The software engineering techniques used in this tutorial are mainly adaptations of OO-development methodologies. This field is far too wide to give specific references here, but the excellent Object Technology Series (http://www.awl.com/cseng/otseries) is a good starting point.


next up previous contents index
Next: Structure of tutorial Up: Introduction Previous: Intended audience   Contents   Index
Warwick Harvey
2004-08-07